“Rest in peace, Juha Miettinen.”
Man, it’s been a while. Outside of summer breaks and off-seasons, this is probably the longest I’ve taken off between posts in sometime. Honestly, after the emotional Triple Header weekend that was F1 in Japan, Bez’s five-peat in Austin and IndyCar’s return to Alabama, I needed a break. Now the Motorsport calendar restarts and adapts as the world adapts to a new war in the Middle East, the horrific passing of Juha Miettnen at the Nordschleife on Saturday as what’s left of an already broken Motorsport journalistic space races to the bottom for the holy click, and least importantly, we’re back to review IndyCar’s blue-ribbon event that isn’t the 500, the Grand Prix of Long Beach. Let’s talk about it.
Boulevard of Broken Quali Formats
First up, the news that I expected after Arlington – IndyCar’s changing the Fast 6 format permanently going forward on Road and Street courses. The one-shot qualifying is here to stay, but with tweaks. There’s now a 10-minute break after Round 2, and then whoever’s fastest in that second round, now gets first pick of when they get to set their Fast 6 qualifying lap, then second, third, etc, down to sixth place who picks last.
Seeing this in practice was… okay, but there’s still issues. The 10-minute break is in theory, a positive. It mitigates the big problem with Arlington’s runs. Marcus Ericsson broke the format because the Fast 6 round started so soon after Round 2 finished, that by just keeping his warm, used alternate tyres on his car, he had far warmer tyres than any of rivals who had to sit in the pits and have their tyres cool down for longer and longer periods of time. Not to mention the mid-session commercial break halfway through, which has been kept.
As I predicted 1the day before, you’re not going to fool IndyCar’s crew chiefs twice, the Fast 6 draft went exactly as the order of the session was, with the only expectation being fifth placed Pato O’Ward opting to go last to try and take advantage of the most rubber on track, forcing Dixon to go fifth. Alex Palou going second made a small error going into the Hairpin, with that lockup likely costing him pole, that honour going to Felix Rosenqvist.
Now as said at Arlington, I’ve never been a big fan of one-shot qualifying. I think it’s a bit dull. The one thing about F1’s format that they’ve gotten right, is their Q1-3 format, for the rush of multiple cars setting laps at once, and that three-minute constant rush of adrenaline watching the sector splits.
IndyCar’s version, while a variation of that, is fine, but I think more tweaks are needed. First of all, take a page from F1’s book and give everyone an extra set of free Sticker Reds after the 10-minute break. Let’s just eliminate that used tyre advantage entirely. I get that IndyCar clearly wants to incentivise being fast in Round 2, but I think it’s better to level the playing field as much as possible. For entertainment’s sake do you really want to see the person fastest in R2 be automatically the heavy favourite for pole?
Having a mid-session commercial break, even with that above adjustment, sucks. I get the reasoning that IndyCar wants more time to focus and sell the drivers, but a commercial break takes you out of the atmosphere and if you’re going to stick with free tyre choice, it really hurts you if you’re going fourth instead of third and I think that’s crappy.
I got a little bit of shit on Bluesky last time out for saying that Arlington’s presentation was poor, and only now did I find out this weekend that sector times are not available on the International feed and only on the FOX feed domestically. I’m sorry if I sound like an entitled Brit but barring the obvious commercial inclusion, is there any good reason as to why we can’t have that? Will Buxton has definitely improved as a play-by-play commentator in his time in the IndyCar booth, but he’s not precise with updating the gaps as laps went by. Understandable, but the overall lack of information was jarring.
PutDorianeDown on Bluesky put out an excellent suggestion to add Timing71 as a third-party live-timing app, which includes having a time delayed feature to help sync with a broadcast. It’s a great app that worked really well… but I maintain that if you need to download an unofficial app to follow the broadcast, it is a flawed product. And once again I say, the IMS production truck since joining FOX, has been poor.
So overall, I see the vision here and I don’t dislike IndyCar’s new Fast 6 format, but a few more tweaks are required, and I’m not sure the series is going to make them.
Basket Case
The race itself was a typical Long Beach race, one that’s immensely tactical. The Top 4 in Rosenqvist, Palou, Pato and Kirkwood all started on the Alternates while David Malukas was the top Primary tyre runner. Palou hit a huge pass on Pato early on to take second, and then settled in behind Rosenqvist.
But Palou didn’t have the answers for Felix on the soft tyres. Early on, Felix was able to inch slightly ahead of Palou, with a gap peaking at around two seconds. The moment I saw that the two-stopper was in-play on Saturday, I knew it was going to be the likely strategy if the race ran short of yellow flags, as a pitstop at Long Beach is looooooooong, north of 30 seconds. Rosenqvist just held onto the lead as both he and Palou came in for their first stops together, with Felix keeping the advantage, and Malukas coming up to fourth, and now running the reverse strategy with Alternate tyres in reserve.
In the second stint, Palou was actually losing time to Felix, the gap drifting out towards three seconds as Palou’s strategist publicly revealed they were trying to save a lap of fuel behind Felix’s car. It was marginal on whether Palou could hit the number, but on Lap 58 we got a caution drop due to a piece of debris falling off the wall at the fountain. For those who clocked it was a 90-lap race, it was right on the window for a second and final stop for everyone in the field…
…except for Josef Newgarden, who came in on Lap 12 to attempt a three-stop strategy, hoping for a caution to get him back on sequence. His pace in open air was great, but causing a huge flatspot by locking up his front left by passing Marcus Armstrong gave him a huge vibration in his car, costing Josef three seconds a lap. The caution saved him from an even worse outcome, but it’d P14 and another weekend wasted for IndyCar’s Cody Rhodes.
Meanwhile at the front, a sudden death mega pit-stop battle led to Palou beating Rosenqvist out of the pits, and we all knew what that meant. Green flag flies, and Palou crushes the field, going half a second a lap faster than Felix on the hard tyre to eventually push out a five-second lead, and not look back. Game over.
Palou wins his 22nd IndyCar race, and his 11th in his last 22 starts. It’s hard not to feel bad for Felix Rosenqvist, who looked as strong as he’s ever been in an IndyCar. Amazingly, he hadn’t had a Top 10 in the series so far this season after his restart jump in Arlington. He showed excellent alternate tyre pace, dictated the terms of engagement and very nearly beat Palou at his own style of race, forcing the Champion into levels of discomfort on the soft tyre we’re normally not used to seeing. A darn shame the pitstop took away a likely win, but it’s the best FR60 has been since he ironically was in the #10 car himself, winning at Road America and racing teammate Scott Dixon to the line in Ohio. Everytime prior, a strong Felix qualifying performance would be squandered by Sunday struggles. Not today, and I hope it gives him a confidence boost that he can take on the best in the business and almost win.
And would you look at that?! Scott Dixon, via qualifying well (Actually making the Fast 6), keeping his nose dry and scoring a great pitstop got Sir Dixie a podium finish in third, his first since Iowa last August. Some other solid drives in the Top 10 to credit to – Scott McLaughlin, for once, had a quiet weekend and stayed out of trouble for sixth. David Malukas was looking like a potential contender on his reverse strategy but his pit crew had a horrible stop and dropped him to seventh, and Kyffin Simpson snuck into the Top 10.
The Lightning Round
So, it turns out that IndyCar had a software failure that meant their Push to Pass system failed on the first lap of their final restart. 12 cars were caught using the system when they weren’t supposed to (Unless it’s the final 2 laps, no P2P until the second lap of a restart), on the run to the start/finish line. Marcus Armstrong passed Santino Ferrucci using the button, but because both drivers were deemed to have used the button equally, no-one’s been punished as ultimately the burden of the rule is on the series.
I get why some might get pissed about this ruling because comparisons will be drawn with 2024’s St Pete cheating scandal, but I suspect the difference here is that no-one really gained an advantage on someone that wasn’t exploiting the error. I think the nature of Long Beach being an extremely difficult track to pass spared some bigger blushes for the series here. In any case, questions need to be asked as to why the series has had this happen twice in the last three years. And no matter how you slice it, 12 drivers caught pressing the button on a restart knowing it wasn’t going to work under normal means, when Scott McLaughlin and Josef Newgarden got raked over the coals for doing so two years ago… is a look.
I’ll give Kyffin Simpson this though, his outside pass at Turn 1 on Louis Foster was beautiful, best of the season so far for me.
Alex Palou has now won at every Road and Street course that IndyCar visits except for Arlington (Where he finished second to an inhuman Kirkwood stint), and Toronto, which just got moved to Markham, where he was second in 2023 with a broken front wing. Tell what you what though – It’s the second time in as many races where Palou was vulnerable and beatable, and to a minor extent, let off the hook.
Made the point during my last Ask Dre, will make it again here – With Santino Ferrucci down bad and Caio Collet being fine but hardly setting the world on fire, has there been a more disappointing team than AJ Foyt this season? Has the seemingly deteriorated technical partnership with Penske part of the problem? Was losing Michael Cannon a factor? Was it Santino talking shit during his breakout season?
To think, Kyle Kirkwood has not finished a race outside of the Top 5 this season, and he’s still 17 points behind Alex Palou, despite the latter having a DNF from Phoenix. Pato has four Top 5’s out of five as well, and he’s 69 points back. Malukas has easily been the best Penske, and he’s 63 back. This is not a two-horse race yet, the Month of May is a big test for season-long credentials, but there’s been a standout two and everyone else so far.
The Verdict: 6/10 (Decent) – This was a pretty typical IndyCar Long Beach race. It’s one of prestige and superb atmosphere, but the actual racing was more of the tactical kind. Felix did a superb job of taking the fight to Palou head on, but it’s always going to be a limited score when a race gets decided in the pits and Long Beach… does a Long Beach. Decent tactical race, not a classic. See you for Indianapolis.